University of New Orleans history professor Marc Landry has received the Baker-Burton Award for the best first book in European history by a member of a Southern college or university. His book, Mountain Battery: The Alps, Water and Power in the Fossil Fuel Age, is published by Stanford University Press.
The Baker-Burton Award is presented by the European History Section of the Southern Historical Association. The award recognizes the best first book in European history published by a member of the section, a graduate student, or a faculty member at a Southern college or university. Selection criteria include the quality and originality of research, new interpretations and insights, and literary quality.
According to the award committee, Landry’s book “details the history of hydroelectric power—aka ‘white coal’—as a power source in the Alps,” and “takes a critical approach to hydroelectric power and balances its green promise with comparison to other energy sources.” The committee noted that by comparing hydropower to systems of oil or coal while outlining its importance to West-Central Europe’s defense and industrial development, the book contributes to political, social, and environmental history while intersecting with contemporary questions of green energy and its future.
Mountain Battery examines how dam-building in the 19th and 20th centuries transformed the Alps into Europe’s “battery,” designed to store and produce electricity for use across the continent. Drawing from archival research in Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland, and Italy, Landry traces the environmental, economic, and military implications of hydroelectric development during Europe’s industrial and wartime periods.
Landry is an associate professor of history, the Marshall Plan Professor in Austrian Studies, and director of the Austrian Marshall Plan Center for European Studies at UNO. An environmental historian of modern Europe, his research has appeared in Environmental History and the Journal of Global History. He co-edits the annual series Contemporary Austrian Studies and co-created the podcast series History Exchange with Eva Pfanzelter. Landry has held fellowships from the German Academic Exchange Service, the Deutsches Museum, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. In 2016, he served as the Fulbright-Botstiber Visiting Professor in Austrian-American Studies at the University of Innsbruck.
